Anime Question for the Great Hive Mind

[howeird]

What would you recommend as good staring points for someone who has never seen an anime, and never read any manga?

Comments

[reddheart.livejournal.com]

We're biased, but we recommend starting in the old skool. ;)

The universe created by Leiji Matsumoto, from which Harlock comes from, has a lot of various series that vaguely connect to one another, and will give you a LOT to watch. Matsumoto has some very nifty influences and a loooong history doing stuff. Harlock, incidentally, first appeared sometime in the 50's, to give you an idea.

Those are:

Arcadia of My Youth (mostly a singular movie)
Harlock SSX
Space Pirate Captain Harlock
Maetel Legend
Galaxy Express 999
Gun Frontier (more recently made, but fun to watch as it takes Harlock and his best buddy Tochiro...yes, the one that was dead in our presentation...in the Old West).

And a bunch of others I'm forgetting.

And then, there's the entire library of Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers), some of which are up on Netflix.

Speaking of places to view, Hulu I believe has the entire Harlock main series, and there's a few other places that have Galaxy Express.

Some other suggestions from our library:

Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust - D is the first anime character I was introduced to in my freshman year.

Last Exile - Kind of steampunkish in a way. Supposedly one of the characters was inspired a little by Harlock.

Le Chevalier D'eon - If you can ignore some of the historical messings, this one is neat to watch.

Witch Hunter Robin - 16 year old kid that can set things on fire. FUN :)

I am SURE people will list others for you ;)

[howeird]

Old school is good. Thanks for the list! Matsumoto sounds vagyely familiar. I know Yamato as the admiral in WWII whose super-ship did a lot of damage using huge guns. Interesting that they would name a spaceship after him. General McArthur would have a cow. ;-)

[seamoose.livejournal.com]

I started watching anime before it was even called that, so I couldn't tell you where to start. Don't start with things like Akira, but you might want to find some well dubbed movies unless the person is used to foreign films and subtitles. And if the person IS used to subtitled movies, you might want to find out if they like Kurasawa and find some anime that is similar to that to start with.

[howeird]

I thought it was always called anime, just not so much in America, where it was verboten to speak Nihongo around the time the first ones came out. Akira sounds good. It's for me, and since I test videos for lip sync for a living, dubbed drives me bananas.

[fierynotes.livejournal.com]

My first exposure to anime was Urotsukidoji (with a macron over the second O -- I can't do extended unicode on my phone). I cannot recommend against this strongly enough.

I'd say that anything Miyazaki would be a good first taste. Some of it is very much kids' stuff, but very good. Some of it is mature, but not gratuitous about it.

For hentai, I'm sure the rest of the hivemind will disagree with me, but Ogenki Clinic is hilariously awful.

[howeird]

Thanks. I heard Miyazaki mentioned a bit at Fanime

[lironess.livejournal.com]

Unless you love the sound of an extremely high pitched voice, get a mixer that can bring the young female human voices to a less than painful level.

[howeird]

I only have about 40% hearing in that frequency range, so I should be okay. And there's always the mute button. :-)

[lironess.livejournal.com]

Hey mute with subtitles! I may be able to watch a few now LOL.

[howeird]

The media is the message. :-)